


what to expect when it turns out you're a psychic alien who might be in love with another (few) psychic alien(s)

by blue_blue_electricblue



Series: blue clears out their drive [3]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:33:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22934107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_blue_electricblue/pseuds/blue_blue_electricblue
Summary: You've been in love with your colleague, who seems to go only as "The Doctor," for a while now. And then, all of a sudden, you start to have strange memories, and even stranger thoughts and connections. Also it turns out the love of your life might be a psychic alien? And you might technically be one, too, if you ever left earth.Genuinely, I don't know, I just want this published and out of my drive.
Relationships: Missy (Doctor Who)/Reader, Twelfth Doctor/Missy, Twelfth Doctor/Reader
Series: blue clears out their drive [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1557325
Comments: 12
Kudos: 68





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE READ THIS NOTE!! This is one of the fics that has been sitting in my drive for like a year. I'm sick of looking at it, but I have no guarantee I will continue it. I have no idea where I was going with it. It was just an idea I couldn't get out of my head, and now I'm going to inflict it on everyone else. I hope you enjoy it as it is. I might continue if people are intrigued, but again, I have no guarantee of that.
> 
> also rest assured i hate this just as much as you do i'm just really REALLY sick of looking at it

The man with the big ears and the leather jacket frowned. From what you could tell, the man with the big ears and the leather jacket was always frowning.

The girl he was out with was cute, at least. Very pretty. A cute smile, cute hair, just. So very, very cute.

Blondie and Grumpy wandered into the university library about ten minutes ago and were trying to be quiet as the bickered and very obviously looked for something.

They were, apparently, making no progress. 

You examined the two for another few minutes, and revised your opinion a little bit. Grumpy wasn’t unattractive, all things considered. In fact, you would say that the big ears were also quite cute.

Something at the back of your mind itched when you looked at him. Something about him was… familiar? You didn’t really forget faces, and there was something definitely familiar about him. Or his ears, at least.

You watched as Blondie poked Grumpy in the chest and gestured madly toward the shelves and you finally decided to take pity on them, walking to the K-L adult fiction section.

“Hi,” you greeted warmly, but quietly. “You guys seem a little lost. I’m a professor at this university, can I help you with anything?”

Grumpy scowled at you. “No,” he replied instantly.

Blondie hit him in the arm.

“Ow!” he hissed, rubbing his arm in an affronted manner.

“Yes, actually,” she replied. She smiled at you politely and ignored her partner. “I’m Rose Tyler, this is my Dad–” (here the man who was definitely  _ not _ her father scoffed) “– an’ I’ve been thinking of applying to this University.”

That was a lie. But you were intrigued. 

“Oh, so you’re on a campus tour, huh?” You decided it might be worth your while to indulge them.

Rose nodded firmly. “Exactly.”

You smiled. “Well, I don’t usually do this sort of a thing–” you had never, ever, in your life given a campus tour– “but I think most of the tour groups are full up today. I can show you around, if you’d like.”

Rose looked rather obviously relieved. Grumpy just rolled his eyes and sighed. 

“That would be perfect,” Rose said, ignoring her counterpart. “Thank you, er–”

“Viridian,” you supplied. “Or Doctor Marino, but we can hold off on formalities till you get accepted. Is there something you specifically wanted to look at in the library, or would you rather check out the whole campus?”

“Don’t see why we can’t have the whole tour, right pops?” Rose did her very cute tongue-between-teeth smile at Grumpy.

Grumpy stayed true to the name you had given him in your head, but relented. “Fine, yeah, let’s look around.”

“Let’s start on the quad, then, shall we?” You led them out of the library. Grumpy, you noted mentally, was Northern.

Grumpy had also declined to give you a name. You didn’t know why your brain was cataloguing so many facts about Grumpy, but there was something about him that made you just grasp at any information on him that you could get.

So you noticed fairly quickly when you realized he was also learning as much as he could about you.

“Bit young for a professor, aren’t you?” he asked as you showed him the cafeteria. He had stopped being so entirely grumpy because Rose kept smiling at him and he was sporting a tentative lopsided smile of his own.

“I get that a lot,” you said easily, because it was true. You did. You knew this speech backwards and forwards at this point. “I skipped a few grades in elementary school– sorry, primary school– and I ended up graduating high– secondary school when I was twelve. I went to Uni for physics, got a bachelor’s, got a doctorate, got bored, went back for astronomy, chemistry, and mechanical engineering. Eventually, I applied to work here. Figured I might as well. Spend enough time here as it is. I’m working on some research now, but I’m also thinking about getting another degree.”

You turned back to your tour group of two to see Rose’s mouth hanging open in shock and Grumpy’s eyebrows raised slightly. You’d have to work harder to really impress Grumpy, you supposed.

“Sorry, that probably sounded like bragging.” You knew for a fact that you didn’t sound apologetic in the least. You weren’t going to apologize for being smart. “But think of it this way: I was the most restless, dissatisfied person in the whole world, and I found peace here. I found everything I ever wanted here. I’m intellectually stimulated, I have friends, I have a good job. It’s a great place, Rose, and I’d love to see you as part of the student body.”

Rose blinked at you a few times. 

“Oh!” she said suddenly. “Right, cos I’m applying. Yeah.”

Grumpy pinched the bridge of his nose and you bit back a smile.

“It can’t be all great,” Grumpy needled, looking at you with hard eyes.

You raised your eyebrows innocently at him.

“Look, I agreed to this tour because Rose wanted it,” he said. “But I’d be much happier walking the grounds for myself to get the real story about this place. I don’t like tours. They never show you the bad bits.”

“I wonder why the tourism industry never focuses on the bad bits,” you responded, just as innocently.

Grumpy shot you a look. 

“Da’ has a point,” Rose said quickly, trying to deescalate the situation. “We know all the good things about this place. We saw ‘em on the website and the mail and stuff. But you don’t really know anythin’ about the school if you don’t experience it. But like… that’s why we were mucking about in the library. We wanted to see what else there was.”

There we go, that was a good lie. You’d reward a good lie.

“Well…” You pretended to deliberate a moment. “Okay, being completely honest, taking the salesperson mask off… I really love this place. There’s not really anything bad here.”

Grumpy narrowed his eyes and frowned.

“I’m serious!” you protested. “The worst you’ll find is a bunch of entitled rich kids, but there’s not even that many of those.”

“There’s nothing weird except for entitled rich kids?” Grumpy asked skeptically.

“Ah-ah-ah,” you said. “You asked for  _ bad _ things, not  _ weird _ things. I said that there’s nothing really  _ bad  _ here. There’s plenty of  _ weird _ stuff. In fact, number one on the list of weird stuff is our most popular professor, the Doctor.”

Rose’s eyebrows jumped. Grumpy’s furrowed further, but despite how much he tried to hide it, he was also quite surprised. They looked at each other for a moment and had a sort of silent conversation.

You grinned. They definitely knew something about the Doctor. He wouldn’t tell you anything about his past, but that was okay; you had people coming through asking about him all the time, and you picked up some information about him. You could always tell when someone knew about him. They always showed up really sketchily.

After about thirty seconds, the pair turned back to you, eerily in synch. 

Grumpy was the one to finally speak up.

“Doctor who?”

* * *

“Doctor!” You banged on his office door. No luck. The electric guitar was just too loud. “Doctor!”

And still the guitar solo for “Bohemian Rhapsody” continued.

You kicked at the door with all your might. “DOCTOR!”

The guitar cut off with a screech.

“What is it?” A riff played on the other side of the door. “I’m meditating!”

“People here to see you!” After Grumpy– whose name, you found out, was supposedly John Smith (you decided not to call him on the fact that he and his ‘daughter’ had different last names, it seemed too easy)– said the line that the Doctor lives for and you explained that it was just ‘the Doctor,’ the two of them stepped aside for a moment and had a hushed argument before finally requesting to meet him. After such an odd and mysterious show, you could hardly say no.

“Tell them I’m having a heart attack,” the Doctor called through the door.

“They’re right here,” you informed him.

“Oh,” he said. “Sorry, terribly busy, can’t come talk to you, I’m having a heart attack, come back another time. Viridian, what are you doing, leading people to my door? You’re not my publicist. Or my secretary. I don’t have a secretary for a reason, you know.”

“You do have a secretary,” you said tiredly, listening to him futz about on the other side of the door. “I’ve told you this fifty times. Paula is the division secretary, she’s all of our secretaries.”

Another loud guitar riff played.

Rose, at this point, was almost in hysterics. She clearly thought this whole thing was the funniest thing in the world.

“Stop that,” you hissed to her. “You’ll only encourage him.”

John didn’t look happy. “He’s Scottish.”

“You’re Northern, I’m American, he’s Scottish, Rose is… normal-British, do you have a word for that? Whatever, I’m American,” you said, shrugging. “We’ve got a veritable cocktail of fun accents. Doctor!” You banged another time on his door when you heard the guitar start again.

Rose started up with her giggles again and nudged John in the side. She clearly didn’t think you noticed the exchange. To be fair, you barely did, you were mostly paying attention to the crazy man you called a colleague, but you heard her when she laughed out into John’s ear, “That’s you, crazy old man going by Doctor.”

And you also heard his low grumble of, “Potentially.”

She looked at him oddly at that, but he only smiled and winked at her.

Huh. What a weird exchange. You would definitely file that away for further examination later.

“Doctor. Please?” You used your sweetest, softest voice. John scoffed, as though he couldn’t believe you’d try something like that, but you saw that even his eyes softened, just a little. It was the voice that you knew could get you whatever you wanted. The Doctor was so weak for that voice.

There was a long pause. Then:

“… Who did you say they were again?”

Success!

“Well, it’s a John Smith and a Rose Tyler, I told them that–”

Your intended explanation was interrupted by the sound of something– his Newton’s Cradle, maybe?– falling to the floor with a loud  _ crash. _

“Doctor?”

The sound of rapid footsteps was all the warning you got before the door was thrown open. 

You blinked in surprise and took a step back. The Doctor had a handsome face, to be sure, and you wouldn’t mind kissing it if he ever offered, but you didn’t need it two inches away from yours otherwise.

And besides, his very handsome face looked… hurt. Really, really, hurt. His blue eyes settled on Rose and he exhaled harshly, almost in pain.

“Rose Tyler,” he breathed out.

“Er,” she said. “Do I know you?”

There was a long, pointed silence.

“No,” the Doctor finally replied. “No, of course you don’t. And who’ve you got with– ah, Ears.”

He switched his icy blue gaze to John and examined him carefully.

John bristled and said, “You’re one to talk, Grandpa.”

“On no, it’s a good thing,” he replied absently, his attention slowly drifting back to Rose. “It was you or Beanpole, and I’m in no mood to deal with a lovestruck child. I’d much rather a lovestruck anarchist.”

You looked at Rose. Rose looked at you. She seemed about as confused as you felt.

“Hi,” you finally said. “Does anyone want to tell me what’s going on?”

The Doctor broke his gaze away from Rose to blink at you in surprise, and John shook himself out of his glare at the Doctor.

In the back of your mind, someone whispered,  _ They don’t know. _

You winced a moment, but moved on.

“Doctor?” you asked. “What’s happening?”

The Doctor looked at you intently for a moment. Then he said, “Nothing that concerns you. Go on, go and enjoy a lunch or something. Take Rose. Have fun.”

“Doctor,” you said plaintively. A second later, you realized that Rose had said the exact same thing at the exact same time as you.

“Go,” John told her. “I can handle this one time. I’ll call you if I need to save the world, promise.”

“Viridian,” the Doctor said, looking at you very seriously.

You frowned. “You never… fine. Let’s go, Rose. They’ll be done soon.”

You pulled Rose down the hallway and back the way you came. You heard John enter the Doctor’s office and shut the door behind him.

You looked at Rose and sighed theatrically. “Men.”

She snorted in agreement.

“You’re not actually applying here, huh?” you asked.

“Nah,” she replied.

“I figured. So, lunch?”

You took her out for fish and chips.

Twenty minutes into your (actually pretty fun) lunch, Rose asked, “Viridian? Are you okay? Why are you crying?”

You felt your cheeks, and sure enough, you were weeping pretty steadily. 

“I have no idea,” you said.


	2. Chapter 2

“What was  _ that _ all about?” you asked the Doctor after you saw Rose and John leave.

“Nothing,” the Doctor replied. He was quietly picking away at his guitar, staring absently into space. “Forget about it, Viridian. I will, in a few minutes.”

Ah, yes, him and his tendency to ‘delete’ things that he thought were unimportant.

“Well,” you chewed at your lip. “If you say so.”

You pulled your bag up and sat heavily into the chair opposite his at his desk. You sometimes just sat in the same room and graded papers. It was nice. 

“That John guy was pretty familiar, actually,” you told him as you started pulling papers out of your bag. “I felt like I knew him. Or met him before, or something.”

“Oh?” the Doctor replied absently, still plucking his guitar, but with the slightest hint of a smirk in his voice.

“Yeah,” you said, pausing in pulling papers out to stare off into the middle distance for a moment. Where had you… seen him before? You knew you had. You wouldn’t forget a face like that. “I think he saved my life once.”

The Doctor played a wrong note and you flinched, turning to look at him in confusion.

He was staring at you.

“What?” he said.

“I don’t know,” you said, shrugging. “I’ve had surprisingly many near-death experiences. I think that was the one where… let’s see, I was getting my chemistry degree at the time, so I was twenty, I think, and there was a really awful…”

The Doctor kept looking at you.

You trailed off. “No, you know what? You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

The Doctor walked around the desk to you, putting his guitar down and turning your chair to face him. He crouched down so he was eye-level with you and stared you down dead-on.

“Try me.”

You shrugged. “I don’t know. I was in a motorcycle accident, someone didn’t see me and was turning onto the road where I was driving. I managed to swerve around them, but lost control of the bike. Ended up going flying off. I wasn’t hurt too badly but I hit my head pretty hard, so…”

“So tell me what happened anyway,” the Doctor insisted. “If it was a head injury, it was a head injury, but tell me where John Smith came in.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.” You were so entirely unwilling to tell him the real story that it wasn’t even funny. “I hit my head and had a crazy dream, and this guy who looked like John Smith carried me to the hospital.”

“There’s more to it than that,” he said, guessing correctly. “I won’t put you in a madhouse, Viridian. If either of the two of us belongs there, it would be me, not you.”

“Doctor–”

“Viridian.” He looked at you intently. “Please.”

And goddamnit, just like you knew you had a voice that would always get him to do as you asked, he had one of his own. You couldn’t resist it for long. 

“Well…” you sighed. You didn’t want to tell the Doctor about this and have him think you were some sort of crazy person. You needed him to respect you. 

But he was looking at you so earnestly…

“Fine,” you acquiesced. “But don’t laugh or anything, I know it’s insane. It was just a dream anyway. You know I get weird dreams.”

You could remember the incident well. It wasn’t the type of thing you’d forget. It was just… definitely something you had dreamed up. 

You had landed hard, but managed to roll and dissipate most of the kinetic energy without breaking any limbs. On the last tumble, though, you smashed your head against the curb. You hadn’t realized it was so close. You sat up, dazed and confused. You remembered hearing water running and being faintly aware of sitting right next to a storm drain.

A Northern accented voice had shouted for you to get away from there, but you weren’t really aware of your surroundings. And the voice, combined with the fall, had resulted in a sort of ringing noise that you couldn’t really focus over. 

And then… something had happened. It felt so real, even though you knew it had to be a dream. Something had… something in the drain grabbed your wrist.

From there, it was sort of a blur of panic and images. Something in the sewers, a man looking like John Smith running up with an axe and swinging it at you, screaming, the axe falling, the thing letting you go, darkness. John Smith carrying you to the hospital. Darkness.

Waking up in the hospital alone.

The Doctor searched your face for a minute after your story and you felt increasingly uncomfortable under his gaze.

“Look, it’s stupid,” you said quickly, trying to turn away from him. “I was in a crash, I hit my head, John Smith saved me, and I had a fever dream about it. It’s whatever.”

The Doctor grabbed your chin and forced you to look at him. Your heart rate instantly picked up. He shouldn’t do that to you. It was a really bad idea. You knew he knew about your crush on him and it wasn’t fair for him to be getting so close to you.

“Doctor–” you tried to pull away again, tried to tell him how unfair he was being, but he held your face in his hands and continued to look at you.

“John Smith saved you,” he said finally. “He did, didn’t he? He saved you.”

“Yeah, Doctor–”

“He really did.” He let go of you and turned to pace around the room. “Was it just the once? You’ve only seen Big Ears one other time?”

“I… don’t know,” you replied, trying to think if there were any other times. “But Doctor–”

“What about Beanpole? Man in a suit, trench coat, trainers? Brown eyes, brown hair that stuck up in every direction, almost absurdly thin?”

“Maybe, Doctor, what–”

“And the Chin? Floppy hair, bowties, braces, massive chin, miniscule attention span?”

_ “Doctor.” _

The Doctor stopped pacing and looked at you when he heard the note of panic in your voice. 

“What the fuck are you talking about?” you said softly. “You’re kinda scaring me.”

He sighed and walked toward you slowly, rubbing his mouth with one hand. 

“I’m just trying to find out… something.” 

“About… John Smith?” you asked, trying to understand. 

He took a deep breath. “Yeah. Yeah, about John Smith. Viridian, you know, don’t worry about it. Just… tell me if you remember any of the men I described.”

“Because you gave such clear descriptions,” you said, trying to use sarcasm to break up the tension.

The Doctor smiled a little, so you counted it as a success in your book. 

“I’ll get you some pictures,” he told you.

You gave your own little smile in return.

“Anyway,” you said. “I have papers to grade, and you have papers to put off grading till the last second by distracting me.”

He picked up his guitar again. You went back to your papers.

Everything would be fine.

* * *

When you were a very little child, you had a dream that a man in a bow tie and a silly hat came to your orphanage and did something to make the mean people who were in charge go away. 

It was only a dream, of course. You woke up the next morning and there were still mean people in charge. You couldn’t remember now if they were the same mean people or different mean people, but they were probably the same. A man in a bow tie and a silly hat couldn’t have gotten rid of them that easily.

But the most vivid part of the dream involved something blue. And bigger on the inside.

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

“You’re stealing all my students,” you complained over tea one day. 

“Not my fault,” the Doctor replied smugly. “Give better lectures, be less boring, and the kids will come flocking.”

“You know damn well that I’m a really fucking good teacher,” you said. “Just because I never bring and electric guitar in—”

“Well there’s your first mistake—”

“And I actually talk about the things that I’m supposed to talk about—”

“Second mistake—”

“And I follow a coherent structure and syllabus—”

“Now that’s the biggest mistake you can make.”

You stuck your tongue out at him.

“It’s not fair,” you whined as obnoxiously as you could. 

He raised his impressive eyebrows at you and you couldn’t help but smile at him in return.

He made your heart do… erratic things. You had no idea why you were so weak for him, but sometimes, when you saw him, you could swear that your heart literally stuttered.

“By the way,” you said, ignoring the frantic movements of your heart remembering what you needed to tell him. “I think I’ve seen John Smith before. A few other times. And those other guys, you know, the skinny one and the bow tie one.”

The Doctor’s playful smile— which he had been wearing since you entered— slipped off into a more thoughtful expression.

“Have you?” he murmured, almost to himself.

He seemed— well, maybe not upset by this news, but certainly disconcerted. It didn’t seem to be a comfortable topic to him. But he was the one who asked! It was within your rights to tell him about what he asked. 

Still. It didn’t make you feel good to see him uncomfortable. These guys, they were… well, they were probably the Doctor’s old friends. Maybe he had a falling out with them. Maybe they did too much dangerous shit for him to deal with and he had to leave. He was probably worried about you and your relationship with them, and given that the first thing you remembered about John Smith was that he maybe swung an axe at you after you had just been in a motorcycle accident, the Doctor might have had reason to worry.

They were his cool, dangerous friends.

_ Why didn’t I realize sooner? _

The thought came to you out of the blue. Of course you didn’t realize that sooner; the Doctor had never mentioned any friends, so how were you supposed to know?

_ I should have realized sooner. Why didn’t I? _

Again, that idea was patently absurd—

_ Because you’re an idiot. _

“Ow,  _ fuck _ !” You grabbed at your skull. If the first thought was random, this one felt almost outright foreign, and it fucking  _ hurt— _

“Viridian?” The Doctor was talking to you, saying something, but you couldn’t hear him, couldn’t understand him because your head was hurting and there was something else and all you could hear was

_ I remember. Don’t you? Oh, you will. It starts with a V and ends with an attempted genocide. _

Vattempted genocide? you thought over the splitting pain in your skull. 

You realized with a start that that was  _ not you.  _ Those were not your thoughts. You didn’t know what you were thinking, you weren’t coming up with these thoughts, it was someone else, someone had invaded your  _ mind  _ what the fuck– 

_ Pretty thing. A shame it’s so stupid,  _ that wasn’t your thought that wasn’t your thought there was something in your head and it was too much, you couldn’t fit all that in your head, something was missing and wrong and—

_ STOP IT! STOP! STOP! _

You balled your hands into fists and pounded them against your skull, once, again, again, four times—

You stopped, suddenly, and felt the presence recoil, then draw back.

You turned to the Doctor, your eyes wide and full of unshed tears.

“Doctor, what the _ fuck _ was that?”

The Doctor didn’t respond, he stared back at you, his eyes just as wide as yours and somehow even more panicked.

“Doctor, please, you have to– you have to tell me what’s going on,” you begged.

He seemed to come back to himself with a start. Before you knew what was going on, he walked over to you, and his hands were on your head, and you were gone.

* * *

The man in the brown pinstripe suit with the weird flashlight grabbed you by the waist and pulled you from the path of a murderous lizard creature called a– Kardashian? But that couldn’t be right– and babbled something about psychoactive drugs that were making this normally quite rational creature attack you. You were ten, but you were also a prodigy freshman in high school, so you got the gist of what he was saying.

“So we need to restrain him until the drug is flushed from his system, or until you can inject him with sci-fi Narcan that you might have,” you said, trying your hardest to be cool and not cry your ten-year-old eyes out.

There was a low growling noise from nearby and you, to your shame, actually whimpered. 

The man looked down at you. 

“Right,” he said, and hoisted you up into his arms. “Hullo. I’m the Doctor, you’re very clever, and we’re going to run now.”

And he carried you away from the creature.

He did use weird sci-fi Narcan to subdue the lizard man, and afterward he kissed you on the forehead and told you that you were brilliant for coming up with such a thing. And the lizard man felt better and apologized profusely for scaring you so, and then you got really tired from running for your life and being ten years old, and fell asleep, and woke up in bed, and realized that it was all just a very odd dream.

* * *

You were fourteen and finishing your Bachelor’s in Physics and horribly depressed, and you hadn’t been sleeping well lately. 

So when Professor Harris’s face melted off and some sort of blob creature put a ring of what appeared to be their own flesh around your neck, you didn’t even react. If this was the way you were going to go, all you could say was ‘fucking finally.’

The thing that was Professor Harris touted you off as a hostage and the flesh collar tightened almost imperceptibly with every passing second. It was slowly but surely cutting off your air supply.

A man with a leather jacket and big ears appeared and had some sort of public debate with the ex-Professor Harris. You missed most of it, though, because you passed out from a lack of oxygen.

When you woke up, the guy with the big ears was hovering over you, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

“You’re awake. Fantastic.” He gave a brilliant smile. “The threat’s gone, and I think the school is giving everyone who had Dosod a pass. Good luck to you on the rest of your career.”

He stood up to leave, walk right out of your life forever.

“Why did you save me?” you asked, your voice raspy.

The man looked at you curiously. “Because it’s what I do. Fly around, saving the people I can.”

You stared at him for a few moments, then let your gaze slide down to your hands, clasped on your chest over a blanket. Apparently, you were in your bed in your dorm room.

“You should have let him finish the job,” you said softly, so softly  _ you _ could barely hear you, let alone a stranger across the room.

“What?” he asked, aghast. Apparently he heard you. 

Well, he was a stranger. No point in lying to him, you’d never see him again.

“I don’t see the point to life and I would rather die,” you told him, matter of factly. “I’ve only been around for fifteen years. I’ve accomplished a lot. And still, it feels like nothing matters. I’m bored. All of my contributions are pointless and I’m missing… something. I’m missing something and I don’t know what but it makes me so frustrated I just want to cry all the time, and I don’t know who I am, and I’m confused and I want to die. And it would have been easier for all involved parties to just let Dr. Harris kill me.”

The man looked like you had just slapped him across the face. He looked horrified.

He stepped over to you quickly and knelt beside the bed, opening and closing his mouth a few times, looking like he had no idea as to how to respond.

“Sorry,” you said softly, suddenly realizing something, “I didn’t mean to come off as rude. I know you probably worked hard to protect me. Thank you for saving me. It was unnecessary and I’m sorry to have troubled you with it, but thank you.”

“What’s your name?” he asked.

You blinked at him curiously, then tried to think about it for yourself. You’d been meaning to implement your new name.

“These days, I like to go by… Doppler.”

“Like the physicist?” he asked politely.

“Yeah. I named myself after him.” You shrugged to yourself. “I just like physics, is all.”

“Doppler,” he smiled at you. “I promise you, life is worth living.”

“My experiences seem to prove otherwise,” you replied dully. “I just don’t care about life.”

“Yes, you do.”

You were taken aback for a moment. What a bold declaration to make. He didn’t know you from Adam, how the hell did he know whether or not you cared about life?

“I’ll tell you how I know,” he said, almost like he had read your mind. “You want to be like Doppler.”

You gave him a look. “I named myself after a physicist, big deal. I like the guy and I needed a gender-neutral name.”

“It is a big deal!” he protested. “It most certainly is a big deal. You love something, and that something is learning. You want to understand the universe. And you named yourself after a man who drastically aided the world in that quest. You want to help people learn and understand. The stars out there? They are waiting for you, and you know it, and you need to understand them. You care about them. You can’t very well figure out the secrets of life when you’re dead, can you?”

You didn’t know how to respond. That was… that was true. That was true. You lived to learn and help.

“Doppler, genius child of the stars.” The man smiled at you. “Life is worth living. Maybe you can’t yet see that, but live for the stars a while. They’ll help you until you can live for yourself.”

Tears welled up in your eyes. You hardly noticed them. It had been so long since you allowed yourself to cry. What an odd feeling.

The man smiled at you, grabbed your hand, and squeezed it, tight.

“I bless you,” he murmured. “More life. The great work begins.”

He kissed your hand and you felt relaxed, reassured, finally happy. You knew it wouldn’t always be like this, you knew that after this man left, it would be an uphill battle, but in this moment, he had taken the fog of depression and just… lifted it. Even if it was temporary. It was gone, and you could see, right now, that this was not what you wanted to be doing. And that you could and would change it. It would be hard, but you would.

This man came into your life and he did it in four seconds. You hadn’t even known him for ten minutes, and he was curing your depression.

“How did you know I like  _ Angels in America?” _ was all you could think to say in response.

He laughed lightly. “Lucky guess.”

He stood up, squeezed your hand one more time, and turned to leave.

“Wait,” you said. “What about… I’m missing something. I need something and it’s not here and need it. I don’t know what it is, but I know I need it.”

The man turned back to you, curiously. He mulled over the words in his mind for a few moments.

“Well,” he said finally. “I suppose you’ll have to live to find it.”

Again, he was right. Dead on. You’d live for the stars and you’d live for what you lost. You’d find it, and one day– maybe not soon, but one day– you would be… okay.

You nodded. “Thank you.”

The man smiled brightly and walked out the door. Shortly afterwards, you fell into a drug induced sleep and your odd dreams continued.

* * *

“You’re brilliant,” the man with the bow tie breathed out. “You are. Absolutely bloody brilliant, and you’re only half conscious.”

You grinned stupidly and reached for the bottle of tequila that the bow tie guy was keeping away from you. It was your twenty-first birthday and that meant that you were going to drink till you were sick with your friends. It was tradition, and you were getting fucking hammered, evil robots or no.

Said evil robots banged again on the door of the secret underground laboratory beneath Johns Hopkins University.

“Being brilliant is British-speak for ‘Smarty gets rewarded for smartness by giving Smarty their bottle back,’ right?” You reached for it again.

He kept it carefully out of your reach.

“No, bad Smarty human, it means I’ll need your help to implement the virus into the mainframe because you literally just invented it while being absolutely pissed and your handwriting is totally illegible.”

“Tequila?” you asked, very politely.

He gave you an exasperated look before emptying the entire bottle onto the floor of the secret Johns Hopkins laboratory.

You gasped in horror.

“Evil robots, then tequila, I promise.” He did sound a little apologetic.

You pouted. The evil robots banged on the door again.

“Fiiiine,” you relented. “You’re smarter than me, though, you could just do it yourself.”

You trudged over to a computer terminal and started inputting code as though you were born doing it.

“See that’s the thing I like about you, though,” the man replied, grinning. “You are almost as clever as I am.”

You weren’t really paying attention to him at that point.

“What happens when we do this and the system inevitably recalibrates to a different, off-sight controller?” you asked. You were in the zone now. “It makes absolutely no sense to store all of the controls to this super-complex and well-planned secret Johns Hopkins robot plot in just one location.”

The man in the bow tie smiled, and it was so bright, it was almost like looking into the sun. “Exactly what I’m talking about. I wish I met you when you weren’t drunk.”

“Drunk makes me more unpredictable, better for fighting robots and machines.” You paused, looked up at him, and smiled. “Why do you think that Captain Kirk always beat Spock in 3D chess?”

You pulled a lever, sparks flew, and the robots outside the door screamed in outrage.

The rest of the night was hazy, but you were drunk off your mind, so that was to be expected. You woke up at home the next morning, and nothing was out of place. It must have been a weird dream or delusion.

(You didn’t really register the bottle of top-notch tequila in your freezer until months later, and by then, you had already mostly put the man with the bow tie out of your mind.)


	4. Chapter 4

_ How did I not realize? _ was the first thought in your mind when you came to.

_ Dozens of times… so many times, and they’ve been…  _

Your eyes snapped open to an unfamiliar ceiling. You groaned and rubbed at your forehead, sitting up. Apparently, you were in bed. Not your bed, but a bed.

Well, that was a little concerning.

“Viridian.”

You turned to see the Doctor, sitting in a chair beside the bed you were in.

Well, that was less concerning.

“Doctor,” you replied, trying to piece together what happened, exactly. 

“You passed out,” he told you gently.

“I kind of figured,” you snarked back. Then you sighed. “Sorry. Yeah, I’m prone to that. It’s anemia.”

He was silent for a long while, watching you.

You shot him a curious look. Passing out was not a weird thing to be happening. You must’ve forgotten to eat, or something. You did have weird dreams, though. They felt like they were recurring, like your brain was showing you what it thought was the best hits of its creative process.

You looked around the room you’d woken up in and realized, again, that you had no idea where you were. It wasn’t the on-campus nurse, it wasn’t the hospital, it wasn’t your home, it wasn’t the Doctor’s couch in his office.

“Hey, Doctor, where–”

“Were you born with the name Viridian?” he asked abruptly.

You blinked at him. “No, I don’t know what name I was born with. Orphan, remember? They gave me my deadname at the orphanage, and then I changed it a few times before I settled on Viridian. I used to name myself after physicists when I needed help figuring out who I was, and they got me through tough times. Then I decided I wanted to be my own person, and I also realized I was a genius and having two physics geniuses with the same name would lead to confusion for people who’d have to study our discoveries in the future.”

He didn’t respond to your rambling, which was somewhat out of character for him, except when he was brooding. He was in a brooding mood then, you supposed.

“Has your hair always been like that? Your eyes?”

Again, he caught you off guard. 

“Well, no,” you replied, tugging at your hair a little self-consciously. “I used to dye it all sorts of colors all the time. I don’t anymore, I’m too busy to keep it up. And then I’d style it differently all the time, too. And I used to wear colored contacts, but again, I’m too busy to switch out my eye colors.”

“So, hypothetically,” he said, which was sketchy, “if someone were to have briefly encountered you when you were younger, you would be very different to recognize as the same person.”

“I would say so,” you said. “I think I was hard to recognize even month to month. But I look very different now. The only consistent thing was the tattoos, and I steadily got more.”

He gave a sort of grunt to signify that he’d heard you.

“So like,” you said, “where are we?”

“What do you know about an airship called the Valiant?” he asked, which was  _ such _ an non-sequitur that you couldn’t process the question for a moment.

“Doctor, why don’t you want to tell me where we are?” 

He stood and began to aimlessly pace around the room, which was  _ super _ sketchy.

“Fine,” you sighed after a moment of silence. You closed your eyes and put a hand to your head. It still hurt a little, you assumed from dehydration or whatever it was that caused you to pass out. “I know what everyone knows about the Valiant. Some guy who was the Prime Minister at the time said that aliens would meet us on it and tried to take over the world using it. He killed the President. But the plot didn’t work, or something, I don’t know. The guy died. Doctor, that was like, ten years ago, I was fifteen.”

“You were on the Valiant,” he said. He was stating a fact. You had no idea how he knew, but he was absolutely certain. “Ten years ago, you were on the Valiant. But you got off before everything happened.”

Your head throbbed a moment, and you shook it to clear it. “Yeah, yes, I was on the Valiant. I never got off though, just saw the attack and the guy get stopped. The whole thing lasted, what, an hour? I don’t remember. I was getting over a depressive episode.”

“Why?” he asked, pacing toward you, staring you dead in the eyes, which you were sure was uncomfortable for the both of you. Neither of you liked eye contact very much. “What was a fifteen-year-old physics prodigy doing on an airship of a madman trying to take over the world?”

You shrugged. This line of questioning made your head fuzzy. “There were… there were supposed to be aliens. There  _ was _ an alien. It killed the President. I was getting popular and famous at the time, I was good publicity, you know, the fifteen-year-old genius, and they wanted me on to ask the aliens physics questions. They could’ve just asked Bill Nye, I guess, but I was younger and more of a miracle. The President was bitter that the Prime Minister initiated first contact and he wanted to show off the fact that America had a genius.”

“You were depressed. Why did you go?”

“Uh, aliens?” you shot back. “It was a momentous occasion in human history, and I was offered the option to be a part of it. Besides, I was  _ getting over _ a depressive episode.”

“That’s not why,” he said, and again, it was a fact. 

How did he fucking know that?

It was a reasonable answer. It was the answer anyone would expect. It was a fucking good and at least partially true answer. It was a half-truth, sure, but it was at least a little true. So how could he tell that there was more to the story? Where you just so easy to read?

“Viridian.” He sat on the edge of your bed and searched your face. “Why did you go?”

“Because I had to,” you said softly, looking away from him. “Doctor, I can’t– I don’t know how else to explain it, but I just  _ had _ to be there. I had to– to know this Saxon guy, I don’t know, I was just… drawn to him. I know he was evil and crazy but I  _ had _ to meet him, I had to be close to him, and when the opportunity arose, I thought– the thought of not going through with it was physically painful, like I would die if I didn’t meet him.”

He looked away from your face and down to your fingers, which were uncharacteristically still in your lap.

“You’re not tapping.”

You looked down at your own fingers and flexed them a little.

“No, I’m not,” you replied. “Should I be?”

He stared at your fingers for another long moment.

“No,” he finally said. He took a breath and looked back around the room. “No. So you were on the Valiant, and then you got off. How did you get off?”

You tilted your head. “I told you, I was on the whole time.”

“You weren’t, because if you were, you would remember,” he muttered. It was getting to the part of the evening where he was faced with a puzzle he didn’t understand and he would start muttering increasingly nonsensical and cryptic things to himself. “But you don’t, so how did you get off?”

You let him mutter to himself. He was off in his own little world at this point. 

Something occurred to you, suddenly.

“Hey, Doctor, there was that guy you told me to tell you if I remembered on the Valiant,” you said. “That guy with the sneakers. Or trainers or whatever. He was glowing, I think. And he seemed…”

Your head throbbed and you gasped in pain. There was a sharp–  _ something _ , some feeling on the right side of your chest and it  _ hurt _ so bad you could hardly breathe–

Hands on either side of your face grounded you.

“Breathe,” a familiar voice was telling you. “Breathe.”

You loved that voice. You would wait for that voice, however long it took.

“He was so sad,” you gasped out. “The man with the sneakers. The Saxon guy was– he was shot, and then they guy– the guy with the sneakers shouted at him and then Saxon guy died and the man– he was–”

“Breathe,” the voice you loved said again, and slowly, shakily, you did as it asked.

The world came back into orbit. Everything was fine. You could breathe. You could think.

You let yourself sink backwards till you were lying down on the bed again. You didn’t trust yourself to sit upright after that.

“My head hurts,” you told the Doctor after a beat of silence. “I think I’m dehydrated.”

He nodded, but his eyes searched your face one more time before he stood up.

He turned and began to walk toward the door.

_ I let them go, _ you thought.  _ They had green eyes and silver hair and a side shave and were going by Izar at the time. I sent them back to the ground. Don’t remember why. _

Only you  _ didn’t think that. _ That was most certainly not your thought, and while it didn’t make you feel like your head was about to shatter into a million pieces, it did hurt enough to make you whimper.

The Doctor looked back at you over his shoulder.

_ They are not psy-null, _ you– or maybe not you– thought.  _ As we’ve established. And I told you to stop doing this, they’re human, it’s too much for them to handle– _

You gasped and clutched at your head again.

Any errant thoughts that seemed out of place abruptly cut off and the Doctor walked quickly from the room.

The second he left for real you sat up. Which was a bad idea, considering the fact that you were probably dehydrated and you felt like shit, still, and the mere action of sitting up caused you to black out a second.

But you wanted to know where you were, and the Doctor hadn’t been exactly forthcoming with his answers, so it seemed like the kind of thing you were going to have to discover for yourself.

You carefully moved over so your feet were dangling off the edge of the bed, and even more carefully, slowly stood up.

It was time to do some snooping.

* * *

After twenty minutes of wandering, you ascertained two things about the place the Doctor had taken you:

  1. There didn’t seem to be any windows, which was odd.
  2. It was the most massive fucking mansion you’d ever been in.



And it did have to be a mansion. There was no way there was a house this huge. It was unreasonably gigantic. There was a library, a swimming pool, a dance hall for crying out loud. You’d been wandering around for half an hour.

This had to be the Doctor’s house, right? That was the only place he could’ve taken you. It wasn’t a hospital, that was for sure, and the Doctor had seemed comfortable and familiar in it.

Why the hell did the Doctor try to hide the fact that he was fucking  _ loaded _ from you?

So maybe you were a little enthusiastic with your politics. Maybe you said “eat the rich” in a deadpan voice a little too often. But you wouldn’t have eaten the Doctor if he’d told you about all this! You’d engage in a perfectly rational discussion about the inherent lack of ethics and empathy present in all billionaires. You’d never eat the Doctor. He was your friend who you were a little bit in love with, you wouldn’t ever hurt him. 

Also, he was old, and his flesh would probably be too gamey and tough.

Cannibalism aside, you were actually quite worried about walking around this mansion for so long. You’d just passed out from what was most likely dehydration and you didn’t get any water after that, and your head was still sort of… it still had a sort of muted pain. You kept on getting these… little flashes in your mind. Not necessarily painful, though they certainly were so occasionally, just… odd. Just. Flashes.

It was weirding you out. You were perfectly aware that you had started snooping without the Doctor’s permission, and he would probably be mad at you for doing so, but you actually really hoped that he would show up and find you in this labyrinth of a house soon. He’d know what to do. Also, you had no idea what day or time it was, and you were pretty sure you didn’t show up to at least one of your classes.

(You hoped you missed Principles of Mechanical Engineering I; you loved engineering, but it was full of men who thought they knew better than the professor by virtue of the fact that they were men.)

You came to an intersection in the corridor you were walking down.

“Huh,” you said, looking around.

To your left, the hallway was more dimly-lit than usual, and it got darker as it went on. You couldn’t see down the whole thing, but from what you gathered, it went a very very long way down and only had a few doors.

To your right, the hallway was rather short, quickly turning into a T shape at the end. There were three doors on either side of the hallway and the wall down at the other end had a set of massive oak doors. You had no idea what was to the right and left at the T.

In front of you, the hallway was much the same as it had been. Wider than the ones to the left and the right, many doors at apparently random intervals.

This house, you decided, must have the weirdest fucking floor plan on Earth.

“Well, the big door is the coolest.”

You turned down the right hallway.

And stopped three steps in to clutch at your head in pain.

“That’s happening a lot more than I’d like these days,” you muttered to yourself through clenched teeth. 

One of the little flashes had turned big and painful when you tried to go down the right corridor. So, you supposed, down the right corridor is not where you would go.

You didn’t want to go down the left either, though, it seemed a little dark for your tastes, and thankfully when you tried the center option, all you felt was a small, non-painful, almost reassuring foreign brain flash.

Hm. Now, that was a statement you’d be having a mental breakdown about later.

The brain flashes guided you through the Doctor’s secret mansion pretty accurately. They actually took your through the kitchens, where you gratefully got a glass of water and some animal crackers, though you were sorely tempted by the canned peas.

Eventually, they led you to a rounded hallway that seemed to be surrounding a main structure. Maybe the Doctor would be in there, and you could grab his shoulders and cry. It had been a very confusing day and you would like very much to cry.

The flashes disappeared as you slowly made your way around the hall, and you eventually spotted an open doorway.

“Fantastic,” you murmured. You picked up the pace a little, until you were speed walking down the corridor and through the door and into–

“What the fuck,” you whispered.

This room was like nothing you’d ever seen. 

It was a large circular chamber, in the middle of which stood a– a glowing pillar?– with all sorts of– absurd sci-fi controls on a hexagonal base to it. There was a lower section, on which the pillar stood, and at the edges of which were some more crazy sci-fi control panels and stairs that towards the upper level, a thin ring elevated above the first level. The walls of this level were lined with bookshelves and knick-knacks and–  _ weird _ glowing circles, and, oh, this was the level you were standing on as you surveyed the fucking insane scene in front of you.

Fuck it, Doctor or no, you wanted to break down into tears right here and now. First your mind had been maybe invaded by an unwelcome foreign presence, then you passed out, then you woke up somewhere weird and the Doctor asked you weird questions and it felt like you brain was invaded  _ again _ , and then you were led through a secret mansion that the Doctor apparently owned by magical flashing brain invaders till you eventually got to a bizarre and alarming sci-fi room. You were pretty much done for the day.

Oh, but wait! Apparently, there was more!

Because as you looked around the sci-fi room again, you noticed the doors at the front of it! The doors that you absolutely fucking recognized, because you only saw them every single time you went to hang out with the Doctor. They were reversed, sure, but you knew them. You’d know them anywhere.

You walked down the stairs and onto the main platform. Your knees were barely keeping you standing at this point. You could feel them weak and threatening to give out.

Because those doors couldn’t be on this mansion. They could  _ not _ fucking be on this mansion. They were absolutely incorrect and impossible and  _ terrifying– _

And they were right in front of you.

You’d made it across the room without falling.

A part of you didn’t want to open them, because if you didn’t open them, there would always be doubt. You could always just say that this was a huge misunderstanding, and maybe the Doctor just liked the design of the doors and had them copied for his mansion.

But you had to know.

You pulled the doors open and stepped outside.

You turned around, absorbed the information in front of you, and, as elegantly as you could, sank down to the ground and finally, finally allowed yourself to cry.

You didn’t know how long it was before the Doctor appeared, knelt down beside you, and grabbed your shoulders in an attempt to be reassuring.

“Where did you go? Are you alright? What’s the matter? Oh, Viridian, what’s the matter?”

You could only answer all of his questions in one way:

You took a deep breath, stopping the sobs for a moment and turned your red, puffy, watery eyes to meet his.

“Doctor,” you hiccuped out, “she’s… she’s bigger on the inside.”

And then you blacked out into his arms again.


	5. Chapter 5

You woke up to another ceiling that was not your own. It seemed to be becoming a trend today.

This ceiling, at least, was a little more familiar to you. You’d woken up to this ceiling many times when you’d tried to pull an all nighter with the Doctor, or if you were too tired to drive home. This was the ceiling over the couch the Doctor had in the back room of his office.

“Don’t try to move yet.”

Speak of the devil and he shall appear.

You blinked a few times to clear the sleep from your eyes and turned your head to the voice.

The Doctor was sitting somewhat sprawled in a chair pulled up right next to the couch and was watching you intently. 

Oh good, we were continuing the trend. You hoped that it would go out of style soon, because both you and the Doctor had classes to teach and you pulling a fainting act and the Doctor playing Nurse all day was not conducive to your actual jobs. Surprisingly.

“Doctor.” Your voice was raspy. You cleared your throat. “I may be pretty incapacitated at the moment, but you better start explaining what the  _ fuck _ is going on here, or I’ll try to kick your ass anyway, and I’ll probably pass out again in the process.”

He sighed and looked away from you for a moment.

You studied his face. He looked tired. It was odd. He hardly ever looked tired. He was old, sure, but he usually was excited or interested in something. He was grumpy and passionate and angry and thrilled and excited, but hardly ever tired.

“Doctor,” you said again, much softer this time. Your voice was still rough.

He didn’t look at you. “It’s a very long story, Viridian. One I’ve been trying my hardest to leave behind, at least for the moment.”

“Well, apparently I’m involved somehow,” you snapped. “It’s all well and good that you can leave it all behind, but I can’t, because whatever it is, it’s making me pass out and get horrible headaches and it generally just negatively impacts my life, so you’re going to explain what the hell is happening right now.”

The second you were done with that speech, you regretted it. You hadn’t meant to snap at the Doctor. You were just… really fucking scared.

The Doctor did look back at you this time, though he did look a little miffed.

“Alright then Viridian, let me just put it in simple terms,” he snapped back. “I am a two thousand year old alien with psychic abilities, and you were just on my psychic alien spaceship that is, by the way, bigger on the inside, and also a time machine. I work here because I have to make sure my best friend, another psychic alien, becomes a better person, and she’s currently locked up in a secret vault underneath the university. We all have a psychic group chat sometimes, one that no one else can hear because we are the only psychic aliens left. No one, apparently, except you, which should be impossible because humans are psychically null, but you, for some reason, have a veritable mental fortress that protects you from all psychic attacks but makes you incredibly susceptible to hearing my and my evil best friend’s psychic conversations, and because we are both older and infinitely more intelligent than you, it’s too much for your tiny human brain to handle, and it makes you have severe headaches and pass out. My psychic alien spaceship can also communicate with you psychically, but not as coherently as myself or my friend.”

You stared at him. Your eyes had grown steadily wider throughout the whole of his little speech.

He huffed and looked away again. “Also, Nardole is a cyborg.”

Silence reigned in the Doctor’s office.

Then, you let out a little breathy laugh. And then another.

It didn’t take long until you were laughing so hard you almost fell off the couch.

The Doctor didn’t seem to be as amused, but you didn’t care.

“I’m sorry, sorry–” you managed, gasping for air, “but Nardole– is a–”

The whole speech was very serious and moving, but the way he said ‘Nardole is a cyborg,’ in such a deadpan tone, so straightforwardly, so seriously it just–

The thought sent you into another round of hysterics.

And you heard the Doctor trying his hardest to stay serious, but soon enough, he was laughing just as much as you were.

He was so handsome when he laughed. He seemed so carefree and beautiful. You loved it when he laughed.

It took a few minutes, but you eventually managed to calm down. 

The Doctor still had a brilliant smile on his face, and you were sure you had a similar, if slightly more love-struck look on yours.

“So,” you finally said. “Psychic aliens.”

His lips quirked up just a little bit, but he schooled his features into a more serious expression. “I’m not lying to you.”

“Oh, no, I know you’re not,” you said. “You wouldn’t do that to me, especially when you saw how confused and scared I was. No, it’s just– I always said that if you ended a story with the reveal being ‘it was psychic aliens,’ you need a better editor.”

He smiled again and laughed quietly through his nose. “What were you hoping I’d turn out to be?”

“I don’t know, a secret agent who was trying to escape the life, or something,” you replied flippantly. “And the voices in my head would be because I was a sleeper agent and you were trying to wake me and break the brainwashing so we could escape the organization together, only something went wrong and the trigger word didn’t wake me properly, and so you were here, hiding us away so you’d have enough time to slowly get rid of the brainwashing and remind me of who I really was, but it was just making me go crazy. Psychological thriller type stuff.”

“I would say you should be an author, but that would mean you’d have to come up with  _ good _ plotlines,” he snarked. “Besides, sleeper agent is just as cliche as psychic alien.”

Ooh, he sounded a little defensive. Maybe the psychic alien identity being so cliche and tired was a point of contention with actual psychic aliens.

“But it’s not as much of a cop out,” you said. “It’s integral to the story. It’s the point of the whole thing. It’s not just ‘And the Doctor was a time-travelling psychic alien. The end, goodnight everybody!’ Besides, sleeper agent would explain the weird John Smith stuff. All the guys you told me to look out for– people from the organization. Though, to be fair, the weird dreams about aliens make a lot more sense with your theory.”

When you mentioned John Smith, the Doctor made a face like he just remembered he’d left the stove on at home before rubbing his face with his hands.

“Oh, is there more to the John Smith stuff?”

“You’re taking this very well,” he said, in lieu of answering.

“I told you I was once on an aircraft to see aliens and watched the Prime Minister assassinate the President with said aliens,” you deadpanned. “I believe in aliens, and I can believe that you’re one. You’re certainly strange enough.”

You paused and scooted up on the couch so you were just barely in a sitting position, and you were immediately hit with a wave of nausea.

“Stop that,” the Doctor told you. “You’re psychically exhausted from trying to accommodate two Time Lords and a TARDIS in your little human mind. It’s why you were panicking so much earlier, you couldn’t take care of both your emotions and your mind at the same time, so your body prioritized your mind and made you have a panic attack for all your emotions.”

“Is that what happened. Huh.” You pressed your face into your hand for a moment before you turned your head to look at the Doctor, your cheek still resting on your palm. “Anyway. John Smith stuff.”

He sighed. “So. My psychic alien race is called the Time Lords–” 

“You’re fucking with me. The  _ Time Lords _ ? That’s so pretentious.”

“The Time Lords,” he said again, more pointedly this time, “are– were a species that conquered time, hence the name and the time machine. We also have a method of cheating death.”

You waited for him to continue, but he just looked uncomfortable.

“And this method is…?” you prompted.

“I’m getting there,” he said. “When I die, I don’t… I don’t  _ die _ . I expel energy from my body and I turn into a different person. I’m still me, I just have a different face.”

“Oh,” you said, understanding. “So then–”

“John Smith, in all his iterations, is me.”

“Oh,” you said again. “And I’ve met him.”

“Many times.”

“And that’s why you asked me about my name and my hair!” You lit up. You got it now! “Because you didn’t recognize me.”

He nodded.

The room fell into an awkward silence. You had no idea what you should say or do now.

On the one hand, you kind of wanted to burst into hysterical laughter. It was a lot to process and this much information was sort of… maybe too much for one afternoon.

On the other hand, you were a scientist, and this was an amazing and awesome discovery and having a mental breakdown would mean that you wouldn’t be able to ask the Doctor questions and learn new things.

Something occurred to you. 

“Wait,” you said, “Your friend. They’re a Time Lord, too, right? The evil one in the basement.”

He gave you and odd look. “Yes, she is, though she prefers ‘Time Lady.’”

You waved a hand in a dismissive gesture and said, “Time Gentry, whatever,” and missed the way his breath caught at that phrase. “Anyway. You said you and her were the only ones left. What happened to the rest of you?”

He was quiet. He held your gaze for about ten seconds before turning it down to the floor.

“Oh,” you said softly. “Oh, Doctor. I’m sorry.”

“People always say that,” he murmured.

“What?”

“‘I’m sorry.’” He shifted his gaze up, but he still didn’t look at you. “I used to say it. But it’s not your fault. You didn’t cause the destruction and disappearance of my people.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t be sorry anyway.”

He lifted his eyes back to you. You gave as reassuring a smile as you could in the circumstances.

“You should rest,” he said. “I’m not going to put you back in the TARDIS, I think that would strain your already weakened mind. It’s not good for a normally psy-null species to have so much psychic interaction in one day.”

“Okay,” you said under your breath.

“If I leave you alone now, will you promise to not get up and wander around a potentially dangerous place in secret?”

“To be fair to me, I thought it was just your mansion.”

He scoffed at that. “What and you got up and wandered around in the hopes of finding and eating me?”

“No, you’re too old, the meat would be all gamey and tough,” you said, echoing your previous thoughts. “And now that I know you’re  _ two thousand years old! _ It’s a wonder the meat hasn’t spoiled right off your body.”

He glowered at you. “It’s a wonder your weak human mind is even awake right now. Rest before I knock you out.”

“With your psychic alien powers?” you asked sarcastically.

“You realize that if I ever take you off world, we’d  _ both  _ be weird psychic aliens?”

You stuck your tongue out at him. “Let me have this.”

“Sleep.” He stood and began to walk out of the room.

“Wait,” you said. “Your friend. The evil one in the basement. Can I meet her tomorrow? After classes.”

He looked bewildered. “Why?”

“Because. I feel like I should.”

_ I’m better with psychic things anyway. _

This time, you could quickly identify the thought as definitely not your own, and that understanding, coupled with the fact that you actually knew what was going on, made the message a lot less painful. Your head still throbbed a moment, but it wasn’t like someone giving you an ice-pick lobotomy.

_ I told you to stop that. _

That was the Doctor. It was strange, identifying foreign presences in your mind. The Doctor’s presence was full of… cold, but also warmth? It was a blue and white feeling of guilt, and remorse, and power, and exhaustion, but through it all, there was hope. The Doctor’s friend, on the other hand, was almost burning hot, which was why you assumed it hurt so much to have it in your head the first time. It felt so hot and restless with an undercurrent of desperation, resentment, and regret, like a warm violet and a blue-green.

_ Hello, _ you tried, tentatively, to send a message.

“Don’t do that,” the Doctor said. His voice was– well, not panicked, because the Doctor rarely panicked, and even when he did, he hid it quite well, but definitely stern, and maybe just a little bit alarmed.

_ Yes, he’s right, you’re trying too hard, _ said the blue-green-violet-heat.  _ You’re practically shouting with how much you’d like to send that message. Softly, dear. _

“ _ No,” _ the Doctor said sternly. “Don’t do that because it’s dangerous. I told you that you need to  _ rest. _ You are psychically exhausted. Your tiny human head will melt or something.”

_ Oh, _ you thought, and instead of trying to broadcast it, you thought it almost to yourself.  _ I would be very glad to meet you… I’m sorry, I don’t know your name. _

“Stop it,” the Doctor warned.

_ Much better, poppet.  _ The thought wrapped around you, but not in a menacing way, like a snake would. It more sort of wove between your mind and purred like a satisfied cat weaving between someone’s legs. It wasn’t menacing, but you recognized that it was still dangerous. Cats had claws and teeth, after all, and if they got too close to your legs while you were walking upstairs, you could find yourself falling down them and breaking your neck. 

_ Much softer, _ said the heat.  _ Though, we have met before. It might be a little hard to recognize me, but I’m sure you’ll figure it out.  _

_ Missy, stop it. _ The Doctor again. Cool, but warm. A contradiction.

_ Missy? Is that your name? _ you asked in what you hoped was a conversational tone.

_ Only inasmuch as the Doctor is his real name. _ The more you felt the presence, the more you enjoyed it.  _ Some call me Missy, pet. But you can call me your Mistress. _

You felt your face get  _ very _ hot very quickly, and you hoped that any thoughts you might have stayed very much within your own head.

Judging by the look on the Doctor’s face, you hadn’t quite succeeded.

_ Interesting, _ you felt Missy purr, tangled up in your brain. The heat, the violet, the smell of myrrh and dirt and iron, the taste of blood–

_ Missy, that is inappropriate–  _ The smell of ozone and books and electricity and cold tried to pull the heat away from how it was lounging in your mind, sprawled throughout and smug–

_ You’ll learn telepathic etiquette soon, darling, don’t worry. _

_ Missy– _

_ I’d be thrilled to be your teacher. _

_ Don’t– _

Oh. You were about to pass out again.

Suddenly, your mind was empty except for you. All presences had withdrawn and you were alone in your head. You must’ve accidentally broadcast that information to everyone in the psychic group chat.

“Rest,” the Doctor said sternly, and he was much more serious this time. “Or I’ll come back in here with a tinfoil hat.”

“That doesn’t actually work to block telepathic communication,” you said.

The Doctor just looked at you and pushed you back so you were lying down on the couch.

“Doctor?” you asked as he began to walk away. “It doesn’t. You’re trying to trick me.”

He continued his path to the door.

“I’ll just ask Missy! With my new psychic powers!”

“She won’t answer,” he said. “She knows better than to do something that would hurt you, because it would make me very cross. Now. _Rest._ "

You puffed out your cheeks, pouting, but you were really quite tired. It had been a long day, full of too many revelations to process, and even though you were trying to put on a relaxed show, you could feel a nervousness rise in your throat. Your emotions had been on a roller coaster, and it was entirely too much to process for your, as the doctor insisted on putting it, 'tiny human mind.'

The Doctor was at the door now, looking back at you.

"I'll rest," you told him. "I promise. My head hurts, anyway."

He looked at you silently for a moment.

"Good." He nodded. "Good. Sleep well, Viridian."

"Thank you, Doctor."

He walked out the door and shut it tight behind him, and this time, you decided to let your pounding headache soothe you into unconsciousness.


End file.
